Australian contractor PYBAR Mining Services has expanded its role at the Peak Mines gold project in central NSW as part of the transition by Aurelia Metals to contractor mining.PYBAR, which has provided underground mining and labour hire at Peak since 2017 and worked with Aurelia at Hera since 2013, will undertake all underground development and production mining for an initial five years.

Equinox Gold has graduated from explorer/developer to gold producer with the closure of its $US158M cash acquisition of the producing Mesquite Gold Mine in California, US, from New Gold.The acquisition was funded via combination of debt/equity, including a private placement for $75M, a $100M acquisition credit facility and a $20M credit facility.

Equinox Gold has closed the $US75M brokered and non-brokered private placements for its $158M acquisition of the Mesquite Gold Mine in California, US, from New Gold.Equinox’ chairman and largest shareholder Ross Beaty took up $10M of the placements, which consisted of an underwritten brokered 34.2M subscription receipts and a non-brokered 68.4M subscription receipts at $C0.95 each.

New Gold’s $282M impairment loss fuelled June 2018 qtr (Q2 18) loss blow out to $US302M from Q1 18’s $29M loss, has come with a substantial FY/CY18 gold guidance cut due to an expected production fall and cost increase for the Rainy River operation in Canada in its start-up year.